top of page
Logo Wix.jpg

 If you have made it this far, this means that you are interested in implementing your profession with arguments that go beyond routine dental teaching. On this page you will find a summary of the topics covered in the chapters of  Masticationpedia Wiki, and if you want you can become the protagonist of a scientific editorial change based on the 'Human Intellect' beyond titles, fame or whatever.
Read, subscribe, correct, translate and write: share your knowledge with Humanity.

  • Facebook - White Circle
  • LinkedIn - White Circle
  • Twitter - White Circle
Chapter 2: The logic of medical language
«But who will be right?»

Have you ever heard of 'Ephaptic Transmission' then follow the chapter series on Masticationpedia and you will find out how 'Noble' our profession is

Patient Mary Poppins (obviously a fictitious name) was followed and treated for over 10 years by multiple colleagues, including dentists, family doctors, neurologists and dermatologists. Her brief story is as follows: 

  • the woman first noticed small patches of abnormal pigmentation on the right side of her face at the age of 40 (she was now 50). 
    On her admission to a dermatological division, a skin biopsy was performed, and it was consistent with the diagnosis of localized scleroderma of the face (morphea);
    corticosteroids were prescribed.

  • At the age of 44, she began to have involuntary contractions of the right masseter and temporal muscles; the contractions increased in duration and frequency over the years. The spasmodic contractions were referred to by the patient as both day and night lock.
    At her first neurological evaluation, dyschromia was less evident. Still, her face was asymmetrical due to a slight indentation of the right cheek and marked hypertrophy of the masseter and right temporal muscles. 
    The diagnoses were varied, due to the limitation of the medical language as we will see below.

The clinical scenario can be reduced to the following: the patient expresses in her natural language the psychophysical state that has long afflicted her;

  • the dentist, after having performed a series of tests such as anamnesis, a stratigraphy and a CT scan of the TMJ  concludes with a diagnosis of 'Temporomandibular Disorders',

  • the neurologist remains instead on a diagnosis of organic neuromotor pathology of the 'Neuropathic Orofacial Pain' , excluding the TMDs component, or does not consider the main cause. 

Chapter 3: The logic of classical language
Leonardo3.jpeg
Interefential EMG

We parted ways in the previous chapter on the ‘Logic of Medical Language’ in an attempt to shift the attention from clinical symptom or sign to encrypted machine language for which, the arguments of Donald E Stanley, Daniel G Campos and Pat Croskerry are welcome but connected to time as an information carrier (anticipation of the symptom) and to the message as a machine language and not as a non-verbal language).
Obviously, this does not preclude the validity of the clinical history built on a pseudo-formal verbal language by now well-rooted in the clinical reality and which has already proved its diagnostic authority.

The attempt to shift attention to a machine language and to the System provides nothing but an opportunity for the validation of Diagnostic Medical Science.

We are definitely aware that our Linux Sapiens is still perplexed about what has been anticipated and continues to wonder

We cannot provide a conventional answer because science does not progress with assertions that are not justified by scientifically validated questions and reflections; and this is actually the reason why we will try to give voice to some thoughts, perplexities and doubts expressed on some basic topics brought into discussion in some scientific articles.

One of these fundamental topics is 'Craniofacial Biology'.

Let's start with a well-known study by Townsend and Brook:

  • in this work the authors question the status quo of both fundamental and applied research in 'Craniofacial Biology' to extract clinical considerations and implications. One topic they covered was the "Interdisciplinary Approach", in which Geoffrey Sperber and his son Steven saw the strength of the exponential progress of 'Craniofacial Biology' in technological innovations such as gene sequencing, CT scanning, MRI imaging, scanning laser, image analysis, ultrasonography and spectroscopy..........

Chapter 4: The logic of probabilistic language
Dental context ?

Every scientific idea (whether in medicine, architecture, engineering, chemistry, or any other subject), when put into practice, is subject to small errors and uncertainties. Mathematics - through probability theory and statistical inference - helps to precisely control and thereby contain these uncertainties. It always has to be considered that in all practical cases "the outcomes also depend on many other factors external to the theory", whether they be initial and environmental conditions, experimental errors, or something else.

All the uncertainties about these factors make the theory–observation relationship a probabilistic one. In the medical approach, there are two types of uncertainty that weigh the most on diagnoses: subjective uncertainty and casuality.

It becomes essential, therefore, in this scenario to distinguish between these two uncertainties and to show that the concept of probability has different meanings in these two contexts.

We will try to expose these concepts by linking each crucial step to the clinical approach that has been reported in the previous chapters and in particular the approach in the dental and neurological context in contending for the primacy of the diagnosis for our dear Mary Poppins.

Interdisciplinarity:

In science policy, it is generally recognized that science-based problem solving requires interdisciplinary research (IDR), as proposed by the EU project called Horizon 2020. In a recent study, the authors focus on the question why researchers have cognitive and epistemic difficulties in conducting IDR. It is believed that the loss of philosophical interest in the epistemology of interdisciplinary research is caused by a philosophical paradigm of science called "Physics Paradigm of Science", which prevents recognition of important IDR changes in both the philosophy of science and research.

The proposed alternative philosophical paradigm, called 'Engineering Paradigm of Science', makes alternative philosophical assumptions about aspects such as the purpose of science, the character of knowledge, the epistemic and pragmatic criteria for the acceptance of knowledge and the role of technological tools. Consequently, scientific researchers need so-called metacognitive scaffolds to assist them in the analysis and reconstruction of how 'knowledge' is constructed in different disciplines.
In interdisciplinary research, metacognitive scaffolds help interdisciplinary communication analyse and articulate how the discipline builds knowledge.......

0r neurological context?
bottom of page